Safety. It was all I could think about. The door to the inside of my house was Everest. My mind was fried. Everything burned. Everything. I don’t even know if it was from fire or heat. Mana burn? Chaos burn? UV burn? I don’t know. All I know is that my HAND IS MELTED TO MY FUCKING STAFF! And if this is what happened to me, then what the fuck happened to everyone else? The shards of my pain wracked mind scatter, contemplating anything that could be a momentary distraction. I curl into a ball in my living room, too hurt to close the door. I’m shaking so hard that I can’t concentrate. The healing enchantment on my amulet is dumping mindless energy into my system, speeding my regeneration, preventing me from going into total shock. I finally manage to get a pain block going on my nervous system. The shaking stops. I conjure water and drink some while I pull my body to the kitchen. Downing vitamins is hard when you can’t feel anything, but being able to force the water where you want it with magic is awesome. I set about healing my body, banishing the burnt skin and regrowing the new stuff, conjuring blood to replace the loss, speeding up my digestive track to make up for the nutrients that I’m not smart enough to conjure. I take off my clothes and examine each body part, healing as I go. In about 30 minutes, my body is back to normal.

My mind is not. I can’t stop my hands from shaking. What was that? It felt like the Ripple from three days ago, but this time it hurt. It was different, not just a cosmic loudspeaker telling us shit was coming, but a wave of something Earth had never considered on its periodic table. I looked out the window, expecting fire and scorched earth, but everything looked fine. Was I the only one affected? Was it a Ripple of Chaos and magic, only hitting things soaked with either? My staff! I just got the damn thing made, did the Ripple break it or fuck it up in some weird way? I scramble for new clothes and run to the kitchen where I had left it on the floor. I poked it with my toe, seemed normal. I’m half expecting it to do something, grow arms and break shit. I grab it by the base, avoiding the control ring. It is cool to the touch. My magical senses are going haywire though. The crystal batteries at the top are full, and dense, in a way that I hadn’t felt before, but that’s not saying much. For that matter, so was the battery on my shield gauntlet and the batteries in my vest. It feels like Change. Like potential, a shard of captured infinite potential. But a bunch of them. My staff has three, vest has ten, and the gauntlet has one. Fourteen pieces of incomplete infinity. I gingerly walk to the front door and close it. Still not prepared for this level of insanity. What the fuck did that voice mean? Is this going to happen again? The shakes hit again, harder this time. How many times can this ant get stepped on and live? WHERE THE FUCK IS EVERYONE ELSE? My city seemed strangely depopulated on the way to the river earlier. Now, my fiance and I were a cute hermit couple; best friends that hung out way too much. I find it hard to care about all of the people I don’t know, but my curiosity was killing me.

Can’t think about that right now. I need a drink. I grabbed some Jack, two cubes of ice and a Coke. I slugged it down and made another. My body is ok, felt like I rebuilt it again with flesh magic, but my mind is shot. I sat my ass down on the couch next to fiance-tree. “Ok, so reality had two big Ripples. One made me a minor demi-god, and the other nearly killed me. I enchant badass armor and cheat the system, and a little punk tried to kill me with black magic and zombies. MY WOMAN IS A TREE!”, my voice rising as I rant to the silent woman, “My house is made of stone and will be covered in a giant four-trunked oak. And now I have something I do not know how to handle in my kitchen. Another drink. I need a plan. I need to redo some things, or everything, I don’t know.”

The alcohol was helping. It took about ten minutes for my hands to return to some semblance of a four year olds motor skills. I put my drink down and felt my magic, all of it, trying to see if anything had changed that department. I didn’t feel anything different soul-wise, but this does feel like a child playing with power tools. I really don’t know what I’m doing, as in I am sure that there are consequences to my actions that I just can’t foresee. But I need to prepare. You heard the great Ripple, we aren’t alone.

First, I re-enchanted my clothes to be as tough as chainmail. Then I remade all of my basic gear in case I couldn’t handle or manage to understand what they became. That was the rest of my day. I was focused. The house was fine, I could feel that through the wards. When dusk came to greet me, I was decked out in everything I needed. I replaced the Chaos charged batteries with normal ones in everything except the staff. The staff sat off to the side for now. I was where I started this morning, except with raw potential. The Army boots were spelled for strength and durability, leather jacket and jeans with the same enchantments, a helmet made of bone with quartz eye lenses, shield plate in a bone gauntlet, and my human weaponry was in the designated pockets for easy access.

Now to clean up the Universe’s mess. I conjured a stone box on my kitchen counter, with enough space for the Chaos rocks. I used the kitchen tongs and set them inside, sealing the top with stone. I placed a rune of concealment on there and put as much energy as I could into it. Hopefully no one will know or be able to see what I have, because I sure don’t. I honestly don’t know if that would work, but my sorcery told me the runes I put on there would work. I had inscribed the All-Seeing Eye of Horus on the top, and then put a giant X on it. I guess intent matters more with this kind of thing.